Qatar halts bilateral free trade talks with the US

Published April 30th, 2006 - 07:47 GMT

Qatar has frozen bilateral free trade talks with the US following disagreements over US preconditions, Qatar's envoy in Washington was quoted as saying. "Negotiations regarding free trade between Qatar and the US are frozen right now. In time we would be happy to go back to the negotiating table, but there issues that need to be solved first," Nasser bin Hamed Al Khalifa told Qatar's Al Sharq daily.

The ambassador blamed the deadlock on US trade preconditions placed on the Gulf state and that "talks were going nowhere".